There is a 150 km long totally navigational channel on the southern tip of S.America which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. Named after the HMS Beagle which carried Charles Darwin to this are in the 1830’s. Midway along this is the Argentinean port ofUshuaia, a port town of a couple hundred thousand. This is the launch point for all Antartica explorations. Tied up in port are numerous seagoing exploratory vessels from Linblad, Huntigren and National Geographic. Also seen was the ill fated Viking Polaris.
I boarded a enclosed cabin catamaran with a 150 fellow Celebrity pasenges for a 4 hour tour of the Beagle channel. We saw seals sunning on a big rock. Multiple flocks of birds and the highlight of the morning, one of 3 different colonies of Penguins. Theses are the middle size. We ended back in town and I walked for a couple hours, had a quick lunch and went through the ordeal of lining up for a tender back to the ship. I felt a cold coming on, so I had a small dinner and went to bed.
As advertised. We sailed out the Beagle passage to the Atlantic, turned south and arrived at the Cape of Good Horn @ 6am the next morning. This is the southern most piece of any continent on earth, Antarctica excluded but thats all ice. Beyond this is the Drake Passage which before the Panama Canal opened, was the only way to sail from the Atlantic to The Pacific. The Drake Passage reportedly is the home to more shipwrecks than any other location on earth. If you have studied the California gold rush and the development of San Francisco, you will recall that the trip from the East Coast to California in the 1840’s took 3 weeks. I was expecting the worse but it was actually quite calm and temperate. A really inspiring site. There is a metal monument on top of the rock to celbrate "the end of the earth". Look carefully in the photos and you can barely see it.
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